Gianni Infantino thinks workers on World Cup construction sites can “draw pride” from their “hard work. The FIFA president speaks out about the welfare of workers at an event in Los Angeles. The suffering of migrant workers in Qatar has been documented in numerous studies. The reported death toll associated with the construction of the stadiums is put at between 6500 and 15,000. But Infantino, who has lived in the emirate for some time, said the construction of the World Cup stadiums and infrastructure gave them back “dignity and pride,” the AP news agency reports.

“One thing we must not forget when we talk about this issue: Work, hard work, exhausting work,” Infantino sidestepped a question about compensation payments from FIFA’s profits for the families of migrant workers who died in Qatar. The Swiss then went into his own life story, telling of his parents, who had once emigrated from Italy to Switzerland.

“When you put someone to work, even under hard conditions, you also give them pride and dignity. These are not handouts. You don’t give someone something and then signify to them that you feel good about yourself.” Rather, he said, it gave migrant workers the opportunity to build the World Cup stadiums. “It’s also a matter of pride,” Infantino said, “To be able to change the conditions for these 1.5 million people. That also gives us a sense of pride.”

“FIFA is not the world’s police force”

While Infantino did not dispute the figure of 6500 workers who died cited by the Guardian, he said that only three of them died directly on the construction sites. “There could have been 6000 workers killed elsewhere,” he said, “FIFA is not the world police and is not responsible for everything that happens in the world. But thanks to FIFA and soccer, we’ve been able to address the status of the 1.5 million guest workers in Qatar.”

They live mostly crammed into barracks, working in dangerous climatic conditions and sometimes without a break. Labor reforms in Qatar, implemented in part under pressure from the international community, largely targeted the exploitative “kafala” system in the emirate.

Qatar’s ambassador to Germany, Abudalla Mohammed Al Thani, told ntv.de last summer that the emirate had made “significant progress” in its internal affairs and had “considerably improved the working conditions of many professional groups.” However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) doubted this when it spoke to ntv.de in January 2022. “Four years after the promise to abolish the ‘kafala’ system, which is similar to slavery, the majority of workers continue to suffer abuse,” said Hiba Zayadin, HRW’s senior Gulf expert. “The Qatari state continues to largely abandon workers.”

In an August 2021 study, Amnesty International documented that 15,021 migrant workers died in Qatar between 2010 and 2019 alone. The report outlined that Qatar issues death certificates for guest workers without investigating the cause of death through autopsies. Seventy percent of the deaths are not investigated, it said. “Death certificates usually report the deaths as ‘natural causes’ or ‘cardiac arrest,'” the study said. This would not establish a link to working conditions. According to Amnesty International, in a well-equipped healthcare system like Qatar’s, it should be possible to clarify the cause of death in 99 percent of cases.